


A Taste of Birthday Sweetness

by EventHorizon



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Birthday, Birthday Surprises, Established couple, M/M, mystrade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-20
Updated: 2018-04-20
Packaged: 2019-04-25 11:56:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14378142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EventHorizon/pseuds/EventHorizon
Summary: It's Mycroft's birthday and a special package arrives at his office to help celebrate it...





	A Taste of Birthday Sweetness

**Author's Note:**

> A little ditty for [nixxie-pic](https://nixxie-pic.tumblr.com/) in honor of her birthday. What a blessing to the Sherlock fandom she's been and I wish her all the best today!

      “Mr. Holmes?  This just arrived for you.”

Mycroft’s scowl as he looked up from the stack of documents currently screaming the idiocy of mankind in the loudest possible voice was a ferocious one, but Anthea had seen it and its many brethren often enough that it failed to ruffle even a single of her resplendent feathers.

      “I asked not to be disturbed.”

      “One, if I wanted to disturb you, I would do it some other way than with a polite knock, an even-toned sentence and placing a wrapped package on your desk.  Do you see any fire?  Sheep dung?  Death metal blaring in the air?  Sherlock?  Well then… consider yourself undisturbed and remember that your reading glasses are for more than making you look scholarly.  I can already see your headache forming and don’t believe for a moment that I’ll tolerate the nonsense that goes along with you having a pained head when you’re the one that invited the pain for tea and set out a nice service for it to enjoy inside your skull.”

Anthea was the finest PA he had ever enjoyed the privilege of knowing.  A headache was positively the icing that would make the cake of his day truly worthwhile.  The world in self-created chaos, a sky that refused either to gift the chaotic world with refreshing rain or bracing sunshine, one Grade Two warning from John that Sherlock was looking ‘fidgety’, and a lover who had been out of bed, and out the door, before even he had risen this morning, due to some poor soul having the misfortune of finding himself murdered.  What a joy had been delivered unto him this day and now it came in a rather haphazardly-wrapped package.

      “What is that?”

      “I have no idea.  It was hand-delivered a moment ago and it’s been through the various scans so the likelihood it’ll explode in your face is low, unless your brother is having a go at creating undetectable weapons.”

Which might explain the fidgeting.  However, since Sherlock would certainly want to be nearby to document the success or failure of his experiment and John had not phoned to sound the alert that the fidgeting detective was now fleeing into the defenseless city, camera in hand, the package was likely safe to open.

      “Very well.  Begone.”

      “You just lost one… no, two… of the hand-cut, garlicky, crispy potato wedges that were going to accompany your lunch.”

      “There are only six in a portion!”

      “Four now and how nice that I brought mints with me so the yummy garlicness doesn’t give me evil breath.  Hope you did the same, since you’re having your weekly chat with the Queen later and she’ll thump your ear if you offend her nose with your stinky words.”

Anthea was quick to launch a lethal blow for any and all contests of will.  Truly, he could not be more proud.  Though the lack of succulent, crispy potatoes would sting like a thousand angry wasps.

      “Have the gentlemen in the chemical weapons laboratory craft an appropriate breath freshener for me.  Toodle-oo.”

Anthea snorted, but let her smile creep out once her back was turned and she strutted out of the office.  Her boss was happy to pretend she didn’t know it was his birthday and she was just as happy to pretend she didn’t know it was his birthday and that she didn’t know that _he_ knew she knew.  Which was a whirly mass of mental noodles, but it amounted to he’d get his six potato wedges… and maybe more… a few new Doctor Who audio dramas for his ‘oh my god I have to wash the nonsense and stupidity of these politicians out of my brain’ moments, and a magically cleared agenda after his meeting with Her Majesty to… do as he pleased.  From the x-ray scans she’d seen of his little package, she could imagine what it might be that pleased her boss and it certainly couldn’t be accomplished in his office.

Well, it could, and _had_ , but she certainly was not in possession of any knowledge of that fact, no matter how many single socks and pairs of underpants she might have stumbled upon in the aftermath…

__________

A package?  Another person might assume a gift on this societally-proclaimed auspicious day, however, what applied to the normal example of society certainly did not apply to him.  However… again… it certainly did not appear to be anything… official.  And it _had_ been cleared by the security scans, which were intensely thorough, so there appeared no reason not to open it.  That, at least, would bring the mystery to a close.

The mystery was not closed.

In the box, staring lopsidedly up at him was a cupcake.  On the large side with frosting applied by a tragically inexpert hand, held in place by a Rube Goldberg configuration of what appeared to be disposable chopsticks, coffee stirrers and the occasional bit of string.  The crown jewels were not so highly protected, and it seemed almost a violation of some building code or historical preservation law to begin dismantling the scaffolding to lift the cupcake out of the box and set it on his desk.  Where it looked even more comical than it did in its prison of take-away utensils.

There was something, though, that was scratching at his mind, much like a housecat alerting its butler, the homeowner, that it had decided to grace their abode with its presence, but a pesky door was blocking its processional path.  A closer look heightened the scratching to the point it resembled said monarchical cat now being caught in a rainstorm and making clear the message that if it was not let inside immediately all the demons of hell would be loosed upon its owner and nary a cushion or pillow in the dwelling would escape their teeth and talons.

The cake portion, from what he could see through the paper was light, a white or pale-yellow hue, most likely, and the ceiling plaster that topped it was chocolate if color was any indicator.  A quick sniff confirmed the chocolate, which was, in his most expert opinion, of the cheapest sort.  Very likely the cocoa powder sold in… no.  No, it was not powdered cocoa used here.  It was baking chocolate.  Still of the cheapest sort imaginable, but the granular nature of the frosting was damning evidence that this frosting had been made from melted chocolate, which had, somewhere in the process, met with a sad and fatal accident.  Which would be the person wielding the pot and spoon.

But… why was the cat still attacking his brain as if it was its favorite scratching post?  It was a damnable sensation!  Data was required and, unfortunately, acquiring that data mandated… further exploration.  Which meant, most likely, taking a bite.  The security scans could not detect chemical poisons, though, and that possibility could not be ignored.  Would a would-be assassin choose this particular method to convey their poisonous intentions?  It would be an immeasurably risky scheme, since a cupcake from an actual bakery, one crafted by skilled and talented hands, would be far more likely to… well, he would have already, surely, taken a large bite to savor its succulence.  An assassin who had studied him, though, might wager a puzzle, a curiosity, would be irresistible and ensure that the poison was ingested sooner, rather than later.

Quite the conundrum.  Should he alert Anthea?  Request her presence for the initial mastication so if a poison vector had been introduced to this pitiful cupcake, she could take immediate and appropriate steps?  Given the chance that the cupcake was not lethal, but her eternal mockery for believing he was to be murdered by a malformed reject from a church charity sale would be, the best decision was to brave the situation alone and let destiny decide his fate.

Euripides’s eyeballs!  There was enough sugar in this for a million jars of jam!  And… was that almond?  The industrial-grade artificial almond extract used by…

Oh.  _Oh_ … the cat had clawed through the door and opened a hole large enough for the memories to spill out like water.  It had been years… decades!  And it had not been cupcakes, but a large cake.  As lopsided and terrifying and… comforting as a boy could imagine.  But… this had definitely been delivered by a London firm and there was no manner by which Mummy could feasibly have sent this long-forgotten relic of his past.  As it was _not_ poisoned, that crossed Sherlock squarely off the list, too.  Then who… who, indeed…

Mycroft quickly tapped a contact on his mobile and smiled when, instead of a ‘Lestrade here’ he received a loudly-voiced smooch sound for a greeting.

      “And hello to you to, Gregory.”

      “The birthday boy!  How’s your day so far, love?  Anthea treating you like the king you are?”

      “More as the jester she believes me to be.”

      “And which you allow her to carry on believing, because happy PA’s are productive PA’s.”

      “True.  She also controls my lunch order.”

      “Ooh!  Tell her I think she looks fetching in her crown.”

      “I shall pass it along at my earliest opportunity.  First, however, there is an important matter we need to discuss.”

      “My arse?”

Could he love this man any more deeply or passionately?  No, it was not possible.

      “That discussion shall come at a later time when visual aids might be employed.  This matter concerns… a cupcake.”

      “Is that the name of one of those fancy yappy dogs the rich and famous always seem to have in a pocket or purse?”

      “Likely so, but I believe you, Detective Inspector Lestrade, have further facts on this case to generate a more substantive hypothesis.”

      “Pixies?”

      “A large one, I suspect.  One with silver hair and who is, in all probability, smiling a picture-perfect schoolboy smile at this very moment.”

      “He sounds like boyfriend material.”

      “I shall take that under advisement once I wrest from him a confession of his deeds and activities pursuant to a certain edible delivery to my office this very day.”

      “Will you pursue a kiss later, too, and return discussion to my luscious arse?”

      “Most certainly.”

      “It was me!  Did the little bugger make it in one piece?  I did my best to see it would.”

      “Your engineering skills were more than up to the task and the cupcake arrived with not even a crumb moved from its original position.”

      “Yes!  Oh, I’m so happy.  I worried about that.  A lot.  Nobody wants a cocked up gift, even if it’s still perfectly edible despite the cocking up.  And I really did want to give you a surprise, too.  Something you wouldn’t expect to brighten your day.  I’ve got a proper birthday planned for tonight, besides the gift voucher to do whatever you like with my pert posterior, but nobody says you can’t spread birthday pampering out as far as possible.”

      “My surprise was boundless, I assure you.  Especially since… Gregory, from where did you obtain the recipe for your… objet d’art?”

      “Your mum!  I know how you like a little sweet treat, now and again, and what better sweet treat is there than a birthday cake!  I almost had a bakery do something grand but decided that you deserved something more than a ‘I’ll take that one, here’s my bankcard’ sort of thing.  I phoned her to ask if she ever made a cake for you when you were a lad and she was thrilled to tell me about your favorite and how your eyes would light up when she’d put it on the table, with all its candles, for your birthday.  Molly let me use her kitchen to practice and… I didn’t do especially well making a whole cake, but I tried cupcakes and that went better.  Was it… was it anywhere as good as your mum’s?”

Thank heavens ‘good’ was such a malleable word.

      “It was a rather astonishing duplicate, my dear.  Truly, all the elements were precisely as I remembered and I, at first, suspected Mummy of being the sender.”

      “Brilliant!  That’s the best I could hope to hear, more than the best, actually, because mums always make the best birthday cakes.  There’s nothing in any bakery, anywhere, that comes close, even… well, even if they’re actually loads better, in certain ways.”

And, in that, dear Gregory, you are absolutely correct.  Mummy’s birthday cake was the most horrid creation ever to come from an oven, yet I treasured it like no other for she set aside everything to make it, knowing her talents lay in directions far, far removed from the culinary and had precious little time to spare for a day of baking a cake where no aspect came prefabricated from a jar, tin or box.

      “I could not be happier with my nibble if it was delivered from the most exclusive patisserie in Paris.”

      “Listen to you… but, for your information, I do have something incredible from an exclusive place here in London waiting for later.  A fine dinner at your favorite restaurant, a magnificent sweet indulgence, the perfect wines every step of the way, a few gifts to unwrap, then me to unwrap to finish off the evening.  How does that sound?”

Like heaven on Earth.  But, such was every day with his dear Gregory at his side…

      “Unparalleled in its perfection.  Oh my, is that the time?”

      “It does sneak up on us doesn’t it?  I’ll let you get back to work, then.  Happy birthday, my dear Mycroft.  I shouldn’t be home late, despite this new case, so prepare to be King for a Day on your own, very special day.”

Another large smooch sound greeted Mycroft as the call ended and he sat back in his chair lovingly holding his phone as he reflected on the man who owned his heart.  A man who loved him and doted on him in the most enchanting fashion… never had he dreamed such a thing might come into his life, but here it was, and it was his honor to be the one on whom his Gregory eagerly lavished his affections.

Now, one more bite of the seized-chocolate sugar bomb and then setting it aside to take with him later, as he had done in his past, to spread his good fortune beyond his own meager person.  The birds always adored Mummy’s cake something he, Father, and Sherlock learned early on and never missed an opportunity to use to their digestive advantage…


End file.
